Isn't what you describe more of a cultural problem, or simply a lack of basic communication skills among the participants?
If I'm talking face-to-face with a couple of other guys, or sitting at my desk with a colleague looking over my shoulder to give me a second opinion on something I'm working on, we don't need one of us to be speaking 100% of the time. The advantage is that you can have instant feedback when it's helpful, which I find is quite often.
If there's a larger meeting going on with a whole group of participants, then hopefully those participants were given enough information to prepare properly in advance, and hopefully someone is in the chair to moderate the discussion and ensure that the pace is sensible and everyone is able to contribute. That's another thing that becomes very much harder when phone lines and network connections are involved, IME.
Your point seems to be that smarter people tend to spend more time listening and thinking and less time talking. I completely agree. I just don't think meeting face-to-face necessarily prevents that. Sometimes you want to compare/evolve ideas at high speed or explain/learn something interactively, and being in the same place helps with that IME. Sometimes you want one person to consider an issue deeply and then report their findings, and maybe a formal document that other people can read, at their own pace and wherever they happen to be, is a better choice in that case. But working in the same location doesn't prevent that either.
If I'm talking face-to-face with a couple of other guys, or sitting at my desk with a colleague looking over my shoulder to give me a second opinion on something I'm working on, we don't need one of us to be speaking 100% of the time. The advantage is that you can have instant feedback when it's helpful, which I find is quite often.
If there's a larger meeting going on with a whole group of participants, then hopefully those participants were given enough information to prepare properly in advance, and hopefully someone is in the chair to moderate the discussion and ensure that the pace is sensible and everyone is able to contribute. That's another thing that becomes very much harder when phone lines and network connections are involved, IME.
Your point seems to be that smarter people tend to spend more time listening and thinking and less time talking. I completely agree. I just don't think meeting face-to-face necessarily prevents that. Sometimes you want to compare/evolve ideas at high speed or explain/learn something interactively, and being in the same place helps with that IME. Sometimes you want one person to consider an issue deeply and then report their findings, and maybe a formal document that other people can read, at their own pace and wherever they happen to be, is a better choice in that case. But working in the same location doesn't prevent that either.